BirdFest Field Trip: Enhance Your Birding Experience Through Scientific Journaling

Description

Join staff, artists, and community birding experts at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center for an afternoon exploring scientific journaling as a way to enhance your birding experience in partnership with Olympic BirdFest 2026. Participants will take a private tour of the Esther Webster Gallery to explore the exhibit Field Notes with PAFAC Gallery Curator Lindsey Shepherd. They will then join PAFAC education staff and our neighborhood birding expert on an interactive walk of Websters Woods Sculpture Park where participants will have a chance to observe wildlife, learn about the incredible variety of birds unique to this patch of woods, and practice the principles of scientific journaling modeled after scientist, educator and author John Muir Laws. All participants will receive their own journal and will have the opportunity to demo an Art Toolkit, a unique system meant for wild spaces. All art supplies will be provided. Worried about your artistic capabilities? No need, we got you! This workshop is meant for all skill levels.

About the Exhibit: Field Notes is a visual love letter to the birds of the Pacific Northwest—an exhibition where art, observation, and reverence for the natural world converge. Inspired by the legacy of John James Audubon and rooted deeply in the unique ecology of this region, the show brings together contemporary artists whose work responds to the presence of birds not only as subjects of beauty, but as symbols of change, migration, resilience, and interconnectedness.